He Thought I'd Forget novel · Chapter 3 of 32

Chapter 3: The Porch

Byron plays the patient husband in front of the neighbors, Leona demands her own lawyer out loud, and back home he checks under her tongue until she has to swallow the pill.

Byron knocked.

Jeanine yanked the door open before I could stop her.

"Get off my porch."

"Ms. Hatherly." He sounded tired and kind. "Please. I'm not here to fight with you."

Up and down the street, porch lights were coming on.

A man in a bathrobe stood on the next stoop with his phone up.

A woman across the road came out holding a cat.

Byron looked past my sister and found me in the hall.

His face crumpled.

It was a very good crumple.

"Lee. Thank God. Sweetheart, you scared me half to death."

One of the officers stepped up beside him.

He was older, with a gray mustache and a clipboard.

"Ma'am, are you Leona Aldane?"

"Yes."

"Your husband says you left home tonight in a confused state with your infant son."

"I wasn't confused. I left."

Byron sighed and handed the officer a folder.

"I'm her court-appointed guardian. It's all in there. Brain injury, seven years ago. She loses each day overnight. Sometimes she finds old things and has an episode."

He turned to the neighbors on their porches, just slightly, so they could hear him too.

"She doesn't know she's safe at home. It's not her fault. It's the injury."

The man in the bathrobe lowered his phone.

The cat woman shook her head in sympathy.

The officer read the folder with his flashlight.

His partner, a younger woman, was looking at Jeanine.

"Ma'am, there's an order here keeping you away from Mrs. Aldane."

"She came to me!" Jeanine said. "At midnight! He told her I was dead!"

"I did no such thing," Byron said softly. "Jeanine, I know you're hurting."

The younger officer wrote something down.

I watched my sister go red to her roots.

Clark came up behind me with Davey asleep on his shoulder.

Byron saw him and his kind face slipped, just for a second.

"Who are you?"

"Neighbor," Clark said.

"He drove her," the older officer said, reading his notes.

"Of course he did." Byron smiled at me like I was a child who'd wandered off at a fair. "Lee always trusts strangers. It's part of her condition."

He reached for Davey.

Clark didn't move.

"Sir," the older officer said to Clark. "That's his son, and he's her legal guardian. Hand the baby over, please."

Clark looked at me.

Not at the officer. At me.

Waiting for me to say.

Everyone on that street was waiting for Byron to decide what happened next.

I stepped out onto the porch in my socks.

"Officer," I said, loud enough for the bathrobe man and the cat woman. "My name is Leona Aldane. I'm thirty-one years old. Today is Tuesday."

Byron's hand stayed out for Davey.

"This afternoon, my husband rode the elevator at his hospital with his research fellow. She's six months pregnant with his baby. He told her I was an old patient."

The cat woman's mouth fell open.

"Lee," Byron said. "Sweetheart."

"Tonight he told me I'd forget it by morning. He told me he'd bring her baby home for me to raise."

"Officer, this is exactly the kind of..."

"I want my own lawyer," I said. "Not his. Mine. I'm asking you, in front of all these people, to write that down."

The street was silent.

The younger officer looked at her partner.

Then she wrote it down.

"Ma'am," the older one said, more gently now. "I hear you. But I can't override a court order on a porch. He's the guardian. If you won't go, he takes the baby, and that's the law tonight."

I looked at Davey on Clark's shoulder.

His mouth was open against the flannel.

Byron would take him.

He'd take him to that condo with the Thai food and the pregnant woman's toothbrush, and I'd be here.

"I'll go," I said.

Jeanine grabbed my wrist.

"Lee, no."

"I'm coming back," I said, so only she could hear. "I promise. Keep the cards."

While Byron signed something on the clipboard, I pressed the formula tin into Clark's free hand.

"Keep this for me," I whispered. "Don't open it. Don't lose it."

He slid it into his jacket without looking down.

"Got it," he said.

Byron drove us home in his car.

He hummed along to the radio and asked if I was warm enough.

He carried Davey upstairs and laid him in his crib.

He picked up the Thai food and threw it away.

Then he took the white pill out of the cabinet and filled the glass.

I took the pill.

I drank.

"Open," he said.

I looked at him.

"Open your mouth, Lee. Lift your tongue."

He had never asked that before.

Not once in six weeks.

I lifted my tongue.

The pill sat there, soft and white, exactly where I'd tucked it.

Byron's face didn't change at all.

He picked up the glass, refilled it, and held it to my lips himself.

"Swallow," he said. "Good girl. All the way down."

His thumb rested on my chin.

His eyes didn't leave my throat.

I swallowed.

He checked under my tongue again.

Then he kissed my forehead.

"There," he said. "Tomorrow's a brand new day."

He went into the bedroom to take off his tie.

I ran into the bathroom and locked the door.

The diaper bag was on the hook.

The blue book was inside.

My hands were already starting to feel far away.

I got the pen open on the second try.

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